Wall Street Journal
By Miguel Bustillo
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is quietly bringing back rifles, shotguns and ammunition to hundreds of U.S. stores as the hurting retail giant seeks to reinvigorate its one-stop shopping appeal and attract more male customers.
The world's largest retailer stopped selling hunting rifles and bullets at all but a third of its U.S. stores five years ago, citing diminishing sales. It is now restoring them to hundreds of locations, bringing the total to nearly half of its more than 3,600 U.S. namesake stores, as part of a larger push to restore "heritage categories" of merchandise such as fishing rods and bolts of sewing fabric that it removed in an attempt to go upscale that backfired.
"We made a business decision to sell them in certain stores because we have realized the appeal was perhaps broader than we thought," said Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar. "But we are committed to doing it as responsibly as possible, as always, in compliance with all applicable local, state and federal laws."
The Bentonville, Ark., retailer is in the midst of its worst-ever U.S. slump—with seven consecutive quarters of sales declines at stores open at least one year—and has begun a major retooling of its U.S. operations in a bid to go back to basics and re-establish the formula of broad assortments and "everyday low prices" that late founder Sam Walton made famous.
A couple of years ago, Wal-Mart pared thousands of items in an effort to declutter its stores and focus on faster-moving products. Now, after a customer backlash, it is restoring much of what it took away.
The retailer acknowledged that it may have underestimated the importance of carrying hunting and fishing gear, as well as items such as sewing fabric, to its traditional clientele, and that the slower-selling items were more crucial to driving customer visits than it had originally thought.
Wal-Mart declined to disclose how many rifles and shotguns it sold last year.
Wal-Mart's core customers are feeling "more pressure today than a year ago," Chief Executive Mike Duke said Wednesday in a public interview on Wal-Mart's strategy hosted by The Wall Street Journal. But he said the company was strengthening its position as a destination where customers can obtain all necessities under one roof and reduce travel costs during a time of rising gasoline prices.
Overall gun sales have been rising in the country—federally tracked gun sales grew more than 12.7% in the first quarter. But growth has been mainly in handguns, which Wal-Mart won't carry. The percentage of U.S. households owning guns fell to 32.3% in 2010, after peaking at 54% in 1977, according to the Violence Policy Center, a non-profit group that works to reduce firearms-related deaths and injuries. It said it was the lowest figure the group had recorded since it began tracking the numbers in the early 1970s.
Wal-Mart hasn't sold handguns at its stores since the early 1990s, when it discontinued them save for special orders in Alaska. It continued to sell the ammunition. It voluntarily agreed to adopt stricter gun sales policies in 2008 as part of a pact with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group co-founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The company was among a group of federally licensed firearms dealers that met with Justice Department officials Tuesday to discuss ways to improve the system of criminal background checks.
Yet as the largest seller of firearms and ammunition in America—even when guns were available in just one-third of its stores— the company has sometimes come under criticism from gun-control groups who say it makes weapons too easily accessible. It has also been rapped by gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association who say it has caved to pressure from liberal activists.
Ms. Giffords, shot in the head at point-blank range, is slowly regaining her speech and movement, but doctors aren't certain she will ever fully recover.
"We share in the sadness for those people whose lives were ended too soon," Wal-Mart said at the time, adding that it was cooperating with authorities.
The NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wal-Mart gun sales Wednesday.
Wal-Mart said the majority of stores where guns and ammunition are being restored are in rural markets such as Kansas and upstate New York, but that the merchandise is also returning to some more urbanized areas such as Spokane, Wash., and Albuquerque, N.M., posing a fresh competitive challenge to small gun shops and specialty retail chains such as Bass Pro Shops Inc.
Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's Inc. have been expanding rapidly.
Most of the locations are already displaying weapons again, but about 100 to 150 are still in the process of being remodeled, Mr. Tovar said.
Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, said that Wal-Mart and other large retailers were notorious for lax training of gun clerks in the 1990s, leading to several lawsuits. But the code of conduct Wal-Mart adopted following pressure from the mayors in 2008 "makes them a leader" among retailers today.
"We certainly don't object to the sales of guns in general, but there was a history of problems at big-box stores" in their training of employees. "It was clear that the workers selling guns had no more training than those selling vacuum cleaners," Mr. Henigan said. "But Wal-Mart has since adopted policies that exceed the minimum requirements. For example they now refuse to sell a gun until they receive word that the Brady background has been completed; the law says that authorities have three days to complete the check and if they don't comply by then the gun can be sold."
Wholesale sales of handguns and long guns in the U.S. in 2009, the most recent data available, totaled about $2.6 billion, excluding exports and sales to law enforcement and military, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for the hunting weapons industry, which bases its figures on taxes paid by manufacturers.
Lawrence Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said Wal-Mart sells guns because the demand is there. "There are still a lot of first-time buyers, the personal defense shotgun market is doing very well," he said.
"Retailers tend to look at individual items in terms of sales per square foot," said Michael Brown, a retail strategist with consultancy Kurt Salmon. "But what you miss is that the item may be getting people in the door."
